Interpreting 12th-century sculpture in English churches

The pictorial carvings on the Stone font

 

The Redeemer
Christ is shown as he descends into Hades, naked and alone, to stand between the two regents of Hell, Death as a wolf and Satan as a dragon. Christ offers his left hand as a bait to the jaws of the dragon while he points his knife at Leviathan, whose flesh will be sold as meat in the streets (Psalm 74:14). So Christ is shown wielding the traditional form of a butcher's knife.

 

Adam

The small man who stands naked (except for a helmet) is Adam, on whose behalf the ransom must be paid. Jesus is described in Nicodemus as “both soldier and commander, a marvellous warrior in the shape of a bondsman”. Hugh of Saint-Victor referred to the army of Christ, whose soldiers included all who had gone before. Adam, as the first redeemed of that great army, is therefore given the Helmet of Salvation (Ephesians 6:17) by the carver. Adam stands upon a leaf between God Incarnate and the Devil.

 

The large leaf beneath Adam and the serpent, trampled by Christ

The serpent is the Tempter by whom Adam fell. The large leaf is without doubt part of the original didactic scheme: since the earliest years, the Tree of the Fall had been compared with the Tree of the Cross. As Origen in the 2nd century had put it, “Through the Tree came Death, and through the Tree comes Life because death was in Adam and Life in Christ.”

The carver, evidently highly familiar with Moralia, would probably have known Gregory's very apt question: “What is man but a leaf who fell in Paradise from the tree? What but a leaf is he who is caught in the winds of temptation and lifted up upon the gusts of his passions?”

 

The Dragon (Satan)

The Dragon is shown by the carver with its back turned to the figure of Jesus. In Nicodemus, Satan refuses to recognise the incarnation of God in Man. The dragon therefore only looks back to attack the Christ and is shown swallowing the mortal bait - the hand of Jesus.

 

In one claw the dragon clutches a screaming soul whose hair is enveloped in the flames of Hell. This is an apt illustration. In a hymn of Ephraim Syrus, the Evil One boasts: “I have become a furnace to the sons of men.”

 

Death as a Wolf

The monster on the right hand of Jesus is Death, shown as a wolf. Such a figure was already familiar in Anglo-Saxon poetry: “The accursed wolf, that dark shadow of death, hath scattered thy flocks, O Lord” (Cynewulf).

 

Once more the carver has displayed with extraordinary economy the fact that Satan refused to recognise the mighty power of Christ in raising Lazarus from the grave. Death is shown facing towards the figure of Christ whereas Satan is shown literally turning his back upon the Redeemer.

 

A Salamander, symbolising the power of Christ to withstand all the fires of temptation, nestles against the leg of the Redeemer who tramples the serpent underfoot.

 

The Vulture

A vulture is pecking the head of the Satanic dragon. Gregory I had written in the Moralia, “Rightly is the Mediator between God and Man called a Vulture”. In an Anglo-Saxon poem ascribed to Cynewulf of the 8th century, the Descent of Christ for the Salvation of mankind is described as “the flight of the Dear Bird from heaven to earth”. The knot in the monster’s tail suggests that the monster is under stress, impotent, facing defeat.

The Fish, Leviathan and the Triple Bait

The large fish which appears below the point of the butcher’s knife wielded by the Redeemer is an illustration of Leviathan rising for the Triple Bait, shown here as three tiny rosettes. The source of this is Gregory’s Moralia in Job. Gregory had emphasised the ancient doctrine of the Church by stating that the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ was the work of the whole Trinity in common, and that Leviathan must be snared by the triple power of the Godhead and his jaws pierced with a three-fold cord.

 

In rabbinical literature Leviathan, the monster of the deep, was the power of Evil which would be slain at the coming of the Messiah. “The Holy One, blessed be He, will in time to come make a banquet for the righteous from the flesh of Leviathan [...] The rest [of Leviathan] will be distributed and sold out in the markets of Jerusalem."

 

The interlaced bands on the font bowl

Webb explains that the interlacing, far from being a space-filler, represents the entanglements of Hell. She compares the carved interlacing on this font with that on the font of Eardisley, Herefordshire. On the Eardisley font we see the figure of Christ, holding his Cross before him, dragging Adam “by the right hand” as he “leaps out of Hell” (Nicodemus) and rescues Adam. Adam is shown being actually dragged off his feet for they are shackled by the entanglements of sin.

 

The bread snatched from the mouth of Death

The large bread roll which is being regurgitated from the jaws of Death may be a reference to a 4th-century hymn of Ephraim Syrus. This illustrated Death’s complaint at the healing of the sick by Jesus: “To others he has multiplied bread, but our bread, even ours from our mouths, he snatches.”

 

A volume of Ephraim’s writings was listed in the Reading Abbey library list in the 12th century. According toWebb, Reading had indirect connection with Edessa, Ephraim’s home from 363. From stylistic and other evidence there is reason to suggest that the font was made in a Reading Abbey workshop.